The modern novel is responsible for many of these abscondings. Do you
think that young women would sit up half a night reading novels in
which the hero and heroine get acquainted in the usual way, and carry
on their increased friendliness until, with the consent of parents,
the day of marriage is appointed, and amid the surrounding group of
kindred the vows are taken? Oh, no! There must be flight, and pursuit,
and narrow escape, and drawn dagger, all ending in sunshine, and
parental forgiveness, and bliss unalloyed and gorgeous. In many of the
cases of escapade the idea was implanted in the hot brain of the woman
by a cheap novel, ten cents' worth of unadulterated perdition.